….and cranky with it.

Menu

So the Smarter Balance results are out and everyone is certain all the news is bad. The LA Times called the results sobering, while the Chronicle said they “weren’t stellar”. But in fact, California’s juniors did a good job. They qualified as “college ready” or “a year from college ready” at the same or higher…

So my students had done a magnificent job the previous day. And I hadn’t done too badly my own self. The original Sammy problem is, I submit, a masterpiece that integrates three different concepts without tipping its hand. But the students’ skepticism came through loud and clear. They understood the math. They grasped the significance…

Rick Hess: Politically, nothing is more potent or poignant than the picture of a child’s face at a hearing or protest. Which is why adults in the system must wield their influence with great care. Hess’s cautionary tale of schools involving students in their political agendas reminded me of my own experience with this institutional…

After eighteen months focusing on pre-calc, I was assigned three trigonometry classes for this year (again, over two semester cycles). In both cases, I got a single class at first, giving me a chance to get my feet wet, and then a bigger dose later, so I could really start to experiment. I didn’t know…

“Hey, how was Philadelphia?” asked Darius*, as I checked his work (“Sketch a parabola in which b=0”). “Pittsburgh,” I said, pleased and taken aback. It was Wednesday, first day back after our 4-day Veterans Day weekend. Sometime on the previous Thursday, I’d mentioned casually I was going back east for my uncle’s 70th birthday. Six…

This is an interesting piece in retrospect, because of the collapse of the culture wars. You can see my skepticism of the argument: people who I considered extremists were arguing that it was fair to shut down the speech of anyone they considered the “dominant ideology”. If anyone met any one of the adjectives “white”,…

Recently, Grant Wiggins posted a heartfelt post by his daughter who was totally gobsmacked by spending two days shadowing students. Apparently, they lead a life filled with boredom and pain, tortured by constant immobility and sarcastic teachers. I was unmoved. It was, clearly, a minority opinion; Wiggins’ post went everywhere, and all sorts of teachers…

In the fall of his senior year, Kyle Evans1, one of my top pre-calc students last spring, came to me for advice on his Questbridge scholarship application essay. I was scribbling edits, making comments, emphasizing a strong narrative, when I suddenly realized that the point of his essay was the struggles he’d faced freshman year…

At my first school, I was looking for jobs long before they gave me my layoff notice, knowing full well I wouldn’t be called back. I had no reason to think so; my classes were well-run, my reviews were good, administrators made no requests or complaints, and in fact the ostensible reason for my departure…

Cracked identifies five classic children’s books with horrible hidden messages, which reminded me I hadn’t transferred my reaction to Fish is Fish to this blog. I wrote this the day it happened. Some people think I’m mocking Stanford with these stories. Not usually; certainly not in this one. While I don’t mention his name here,…

Our school was having visitors that week, and I needed a show-off problem in case they dropped by my room. The circle square problem caught my interest. As posted by Dan Meyer, Given an arbitrary point P on a line segment AB, let AP form the perimeter of a square and PB form the circumference…

The new US News Ed Schools Ranking reminded me I hadn’t yet reposted the piece I wrote explaining what happened, from my perspective. I’ve edited it down slightly; you can read the original at the link. In case I didn’t caveat it enough, I’m interpreting Professor Lotan’s behavior, not asserting her motives as fact. I…